I've been a
street nurse in Toronto for 17 years. In the spring of 2004 I received the
Atkinson Economic Justice Award which permits me to pursue, for up to three
years, my passions for nursing and working on homelessness and housing
issues. In this newsletter I hope to report on my activities, create a
link to a broader group of individuals who care about these social issues
and encourage critical debate.

Further information about subscribing to the newsletter is found below.
I want to hear from you - about the newsletter, about things that are
happening in the homelessness sector (what a sad term!), and about goodthings which will provide inspiration for all of us.

This line from Elizabeth
Barrett Browning’s poem has been stuck in my head since the debate
resurfaced over Toronto’s planned Street
Needs Assessment, also known as the
‘Count’ of homeless people that will take place on April 19.Historically, proposals to count homeless people in
Toronto
have been controversial.Vehement
opposition by social service agencies and anti-poverty groups halted a
proposed count in 2001. In 2006,
amidst what can only be described as catastrophic circumstances, some of the
people who are homeless and face massive deprivation of the most basic
necessities of life (food, safety, income, housing, personal support of
friends and family) will now be counted.The Count
is now on the fast track - the next phase of the From the Streets into Homes program, ordered by City Council and
allocated a budget of $90,000.

Remember Streets
into Homes and the revamped City by-law that made it illegal for a
homeless person to sleep at
Nathan Phillips Square
or other civic centres?Remember
what happened to the youth squatting under the
Bathurst
Street
Bridge
? Attacks on homeless people’s use of public space came as recently as
last week when City Transportation Service workers arrived at a grate at
King and Simcoe and using a high-powered grinder erased months of sidewalk
etches by Daniel who lived there.

Today, the sides are
polarized more then ever, in part due to a growing disconnect between the
bureaucrats and politicians in City Hall on one hand, and homeless people,
service providers and activists on the other.City Council’s own Homeless Advisory Committee has testily
criticized the City’s Shelter Housing and Support staff over many aspects
of their approach to homelessness including the proposed ‘Street Needs
Assessment’ methodology, their neglect of timely written reports to the
committee and genuine consultation on matters.

The count is also resented
and feared because its origins stem from uninformed and biased debate on the
floors of City Council and by the rants on the pages of the
Toronto
Sun rather than for some more useful purpose, which I still can’t imagine.

Counts may have been
helpful in other cities (
Vancouver
,
Victoria
,
Edmonton
,
Calgary
, and
Sudbury
) but they also had their flaws and their critics.An
Edmonton
count showed more homeless people than
Vancouver
, which doesn’t seem likely. I
don’t know that any count could adequately deal with the invisible
homeless, the huge number of people doubled up with friends and family or
couch-surfing.

One has to wonder if the
counts, which are supported by provincial and federal governments, are able
to use the following words ‘funding…
federal… provincial…, government… housing - in their
recommendations, if they make any.

Facts and figures can be
good things, like counting the ways you love someone, or counting how many
housing developments are being built in your community that will provide
truly affordable housing for people in need.

When it comes to
homelessness there is no end to the facts and figures; reports, inquiries,
inquest verdicts, and public testimony; films, documentaries, radio specials
and newspaper editorials and features; annual reports, city reports and
audited statements; pamphlets, web sites, newsletters and blogs – all spew
out just about every fact you could want to know about homelessness.

A few years ago Dri, one of
the
Tent
City
residents was asked to give a speech to a rally in
Quebec City
.He didn’t need a lot of
statistics to make his point: “We need housing.”

Here are some numbers
really worth counting:

Zero
was the number of homeless people in
North York
- according to former Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman during the 1997 campaign for
Mayor. He made that statement
the very same day Linda Houston, a homeless woman was found dead in a
washroom in a
North York
gas station.Not long before she
died City workers removed the park bench she had lived on.

1
is the number of 24-hour cooling centres operated by the City of
Toronto
, with a population of 2.5 million people.During hot weather alerts this one 24-hour centre accommodates the
special needs of people vulnerable to heat injury or death. Those include
seniors, people who are disabled, people who are homeless, people on
psychiatric medications or living in substandard housing without adequate
options for cooling.

2
is the number of toilets in a downtown
Toronto
drop-in centre which serves an average of 400 people per day.Soap, paper towel and toilet paper are not guaranteed.

3
is the number of homeless people who died in early 1996 which led to the
‘freezing deaths’ inquest. Their names are now on the Homeless Memorial
at the Church of the Holy Trinity along with 397 others.

4
is the number of inquests we’ve had into adult homeless deaths in
Toronto
(Upper/Kompani/Anderson, Edmund Yu, Teigesser, MacIntyre). It’s also the
number of times the federal armouries (
Fort
York
and
Moss
Park
) were forced to open for emergency shelter.

5
is the number of years since
Ontario
signed the federal-provincial-territorial housing agreement. 46,332
new units of housing were promised during the first 3 years of this program.63 is the actual number of units created according to the most recent
provincial audited statements.

6
is the number of years since the
Toronto Disaster Relief Committee called upon Toronto’s Medical Officer of
Health to carry out an investigation of health standards in the shelter
system to ensure they met international public health standards. It never
happened.

7
is the number of years since City Council passed a motion giving staff the
authority to open additional shelters when crowding was documented at 90%
capacity. Shelters in the adult,
single male and single female category have been over 90% almost every month
since 1999.

8
is the number of years since homelessness was declared a National Disaster
by hundreds of organizations across the country including the City of
Toronto
.

9
is the number of months Toronto Public Health, PARC Drop-In and the Toronto
Disaster Relief Committee have been waiting to hear from the Coroner as to
whether the death of Richard Howell was caused by the heat wave and if he
will call an inquest.

10
is the number of years a homeless person would have to wait for a subsidized
1 bedroom apartment, according to the City’s social housing waiting list.

11
is the number of years since front line health care workers warned City
officials of the potential risk for a tuberculosis outbreak in the shelter
system.

12
is the number of months that bedbugs can survive without a human feed. Many
Toronto Shelters have been infested.

13is
the number of years since the federal government cancelled all new spending
on affordable, social housing.

14
more than half of the children in
Toronto
shelters are school-aged between five and fourteen.

15
is the number of men that developed active TB in the 2001 TB outbreak in two
Toronto
men’s shelters.

16is
the percent of homeless people that have at least 3 serious health
conditions such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and ulcers.

17
is the number of years I’ve been a Street Nurse……….

Enough!It’s time to make a quantum leap to the higher numbers.

38
is the percent of shelter users who tested positive for tuberculosis in the
1996 Toronto Public Health TB study.

97
is the number of sleeping spaces (mats or cots) that are added to the
already overcrowded shelter system during cold weather alerts.

973is
the total number of spaces added by the faith based Out of the Cold program
in gymnasiums and basements in the winter months only.

29,090
is the number of eviction applications by
Toronto
landlords in 2005.

32,742
is the number of people that stayed in
Toronto
's emergency shelters in 2003; 4,620 were children.

60,000
is the number of food plates served weekly by
Toronto
area drop-ins. The people who use drop-in food programs are the disabled,
the unemployed, homeless or marginally housed.

67,041
is the number of households (not people) in Toronto on the social housing waiting
list.

Numbers aside, there are
moral reasons to be concerned about this homeless count. There are also
major problems in the quality and appropriateness of the research
methodology.

A single point-in-time
count of anything always has gross inaccuracies. Other
counts performed in this manner in
Canada
have all highlighted flaws in the process of counting. As
David Hulchanski has written:

“We
need to concede that all attempts at counting the houseless are doomed to
failure, thanks to insurmountable methodological problems.There are too many who do not want to be counted, too many places
where the houseless can find a place to stay for a night, and no method at
all for counting those in the ‘concealed houseless’ category.”

The ‘concealed’
homeless, perhaps the single largest group of homeless people, are totally
ignored in the City’s proposed count. These
people are the singles and families who live in tenuous relationships,
doubled up with friends and family.Perhaps
it is because they are so hidden that they are not the targets of the City
Councillors who demanded this count. After
all, they are less likely to panhandle, provoke complaints from business
owners or resident’s organizations.

On
April 19 1,500
volunteers led by 500 team leaders will be heading out to the street in the
evening to count people. As if
anticipating how irritating that will be for the people being counted, the
team leader job application asks “Do you have experience/training in
de-escalating tense situations? Do
you have a cell phone that you could use in the event of an emergency on the
night of the Street Needs Assessment?”(In my 17 years as a Street Nurse I was never asked by an employer if
I had a cell phone to use for those reasons!).

The plan has a major
discrepancy in the application of honorariums. Volunteers receive zero
dollars.Homeless participants
receive a $5 voucher for fast food, even though most researchers in the area
of homelessness provide a cash honorarium of at least $20, recognizing the
person’s time and knowledge.

Team Leaders receive $100.

We’ve counted enough.Surely my own list suggests more appropriate ways that the City could
allocate resources to meet homeless people’s needs while they wait for
housing.$90,000 could have
bought so much. Food for drop-in
centres for example.

As Professor David
Hulchanski wrote in ‘A New Canadian Pastime? Counting Homeless People’
in 2000:

“Those who are currently
unhoused need to be adequately, affordably and securely rehoused as quickly
as possible.Those who are at
risk of becoming houseless need measures that will prevent that outcome.We already know more than enough about the nature and magnitude of
the problem to embark on rehousing and prevention programs.Addressing ‘homelessness’ is a political problem, not a
statistical or definitional problem.”

You will find the TDRC
position paper, Michael Shapcott's deputation to the
Community Services Committee and David Hulchanski's policy paper on Counting
the Homeless.

2.
Ottawa

Update on the travels
of my Black Bag (my nursing knapsack)

A few weeks ago I returned
to the
Canadian
Museum
of Civilization in
Ottawa
to give a talk in conjunction with the Caring
Profession/Une histoire de coeur, an exhibit that looks at nursing
history in
Canada
.You may remember that my
‘Black Bag’ is on exhibit.I
was pleased to hear that over 100,000 people have visited the nursing
exhibit. I met the dedicated
volunteer nurses who daily handle my black bag and talk to adults, children
and tourists and explain about the issue of homelessness.Here is one brief story from a nurse named Debora:

Last night a cute young boy (age 8-9 yrs)
shared his own fascination with your work.He looked through the pack-sack and tried to guess why you had duct
tape, camera, etc.He suddenly
saw the 1% buttons and asked about them. I explained. He was so intrigued.
“Can I take one to do show-and-tell at my school tomorrow?”

The exhibit continues until
July 2006.

Where’s the money?

A week later I was back in
Ottawa
to join colleagues from our National Coalition on Housing and Homelessness
to plan our next steps to achieve federal spending on housing.

Parliament passed a budget
bill in June of 2005 that authorized $1.6 billion over two years for
affordable housing.The bill
received Royal Assent in July, but the money was never allocated to specific
projects or programs.Today a
new government holds the purse strings.

This $1.6 billion was for
Aboriginal on and off-reserve housing, new supply, housing redevelopment
(such as
Regent
Park
) and other affordable housing priorities. Unless
the funding is allocated, it could be lost.

Please go to the Toronto
Disaster Relief Committee web site to see the action kit for what you can
do.www.tdrc.net

Cathy

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